As you go about your daily business, kindly be reminded that John Wycliffe’s splinter sect the Lollards wrote their Twelve Conclusions in 1395, and that one of them was ARTS AND CRAFTS.
These conclusions discuss transubstantiation, exorcisms and hallowings, the priesthood, the state of the church, clerical celibacy, abortion, the distinction between secular and spiritual authority, confession, pilgrimages, the Crusades, prayers for the dead, and also arts and crafts.
Here is a screenshot, for proof:
“The twelfth conclusion is that the multitude of crafts not needful used in our church nourisheth much sin in waste, curiosity, and disguising. This showeth experience, and reason proveth, for nature with a few crafts sufficeth to need of man. The corollary is, since Saint Paul sayeth, we having our bodily food and clothing, we should hold ourselves satisfied, us thinketh that goldsmiths and armourers and all manner crafts not needful to men, after [according to] the Apostle, should be destroyed for the increase of virtue. For though to these crafts named were much more needful in the Old Law, the New testament hath voided these and many others.”
TOO MANY CRAFTS NOWADAYS, CAN’T HAVE SO MANY CRAFTS. THE GREATEST SINS PLAGUING THE CHURCH RIGHT NOW ARE PRIESTS MISBEHAVING SEXUALLY, THE USE OF PILGRIMAGES AND RELICS TO SWINDLE AND CHEAT ILLITERATE CHRISTIANS, THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION, AND ALSO THERE ARE TOO MANY CRAFTS, LET’S JUST HAVE TWO OR THREE AT THE MOST.
I love proto-Protestant history more than anything in this great wide world.
Tags: arts and crafts, history, john wycliffe, religion, the lollards
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EVERY KNIT AND PURL IS A STITCH IN MY LAP BLANKET OF ETERNAL DAMNATION.
I’d rather knit sweaters and skirts, i.e. clothing, so does that mean that my crafting is needful and virtuous?
(trying to look pious, failing miserably)
This post is clearly meant to be a smokescreen Mallory can hide behind every time people get tetchy in the comments about inaccurate knitting or crochet nomenclature: “Your needlework is no longer needful in an age of machine-made clothing. You ought to be grateful the word ‘purl’ ever crossed my keyboard in the first place.”
I knew my sassy cross-stitch was leading me Hellward and I am loving every second.
This gets better the longer I look at it.
This is the magic that has been missing from every Christmas at my house, ever.
God, I love Steotch (website and Etsy).I’m really tempted to do the Colonel Angus one next. Maybe hang it above my bed.
This…this is beautiful. Including the fake white tree. I desperately tried to convince Spouse we needed a fake white tree. Or aluminum. Or just…anything not green. My pleading was in vain.
Mindy Kaling has a line her book about her parents seeing crafts as tangible evidence of time-wasting. Is this a similar situation or is it more about wasting the actual material and being too fancy?
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, but it turns out that non-idle hands are too. The key is to strike a good balance. Your hands need to be just idle enough.
No, your hands should ever be engaged in industry which is needful to man and pleasing to the Lord, for both idleness and empty busy-ness are the refuge of heathens and Catholics.
I am adding the phrase “just idle enough” to the hypothetical cards I will one day print out and carry around with me in a slim gold case to hand out when I’m investigating crimes.
I am picturing someone fluttering their hands “just so”.
The story here is that John Wycliffe had a very rough time at sleepaway camp* when he was ten, and he came away with a life-long hatred of lanyards, pipe cleaners, and craft sticks.
*Camp Hackmatack, near Lebanon, NH
Do not diss the lanyards. The lanyards are of God. There is no camp craft greater than the lanyard.
One of the beautiful things about this is that these are the points on which they could all agree. There must not have been many armorers or goldsmiths in 14th century northern England (spoiler: there weren’t), and it’s so smooth of them to go from those two specifics to “all manner crafts not needful to men.” Who thinks their own craft is not needful to men? Clearly this means all those other people.
And what about crafts only needful to women?
“Not all craftsmen”?
If you think, the Lollards, had issues, go read some Tertullian
Yeah…those early church fathers, always frothing at the mouth over heretics and the inconsiderate existence of women.
I guess I can’t argue that this isn’t a sin, but also, I kinda love it:
http://fashionablygeek.com/hats/a-crocheted-helme…
Well of COURSE anyone wanting to emulate the heathen Norsemen is a sinner, what did you expect.
That is a remarkably tolerant cat
I need to ask my knitting friends to make one for my cats…
I love the Lollards and I love you, Mallory
I literally learned about the Lollards last week in Reformation class. Lollards, Anabaptists, Hussites…cutting edge of religion usually means meeting a cutting edge one way or another.
Is he actually talking about decorations being evil?
Decorations are super evil. Extremely sinful. In fact, they are so sinful that we should just nationalise all the church gold and make everybody switch to this great new religion where churches aren’t allowed to have any expensive stuff, for the safety of the kingdom. Now quit whining and hand over that crucifix, I got a country to run
– Dirtbag Gustav Vasa
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_I_of_Sweden
Yup. Decorations, as well as being a waste of time and resources we could use to do the Lord’s Work, draw the mind and eye away from the inner workings of the Holy Spirit, and the believer comes to worship the decorations (idols and graven images), rather than God. It’s a slippery slope from embroidered vestments to golden calves and gilt-covered reliquaries.
(said flippantly, but this is actually behind a lot of hard-line Protestant theology, as well as the weird, Puritanical hatred of fun espoused by much of the Religious Right.)
(Oh, and crafts make life fun, which means we’re not focusing on how we are miserable hell-bound sinners, who don’t deserve anything but drab, dreary garments and sober, respectable entertainment.)
What was considered respectable entertainment? Public punishment? Religious music? The mindset where being TOO CRAFTY is not “respectable entertainment” is so amazingly foreign to me.
Perhaps a pleasant walk in the sunshine? IDK, Protestants aren’t good at fun.
I am adding the phrase "just idle enough" to the hypothetical cards I will one day print out and carry around with me in a slim gold case to hand out when I'm investigating crimes.
It dawned on me today that Leslie of Leslie and the Ly’s would basically be the equivalent of the earthly incarnation of satan to these people.
So…this isn’t a denunciation of Church and monastic wealth gained through monastic craft industry and the corruption of Mammon in the Church and society, but just arts and crafts in general because Protestants hate fun and things of beauty? (Not being sarcastic, honest question.) That would make too much sense, wouldn’t it?